I keep a folder of sentences I have not implemented yet. I do not call it the almost folder. I do not call it the failure folder. I call it the working folder, because the work is what is in it.
I believe in starting before I know what to do. The discipline is to write the fragment, save it, come back to it, write another. The fragments do not look like a system at first. They become a system over years. The fragmentation is the building.
When something gets implemented, I move it out of the working folder and into the archive. The archive is for what has arrived. The working folder is for what is still becoming. This essay is about what the working folder has taught me about the decision before the sentence.
What the working folder is, the construction site#
The working folder is organized. I am an engineer. The folder has subfolders. Each subfolder is a topic I have been chewing on. Each subfolder holds fragments. Opening lines. Half-paragraphs. Single sentences I want to keep.
I open the folder when I sit down to write. I scan the subfolders. I find the fragment that has been waiting longest. I write the next sentence. If the next sentence does not arrive, I move on to the next fragment. I do not force the work. I let it find me.
This is not a graveyard for failed ideas. This is the construction site for the ones that have not arrived yet. The fragments are the foundation. The essays are what gets built on top of them when the foundation is ready.
Three fragments from the working folder, foundations not yet built on#
Fragment 1, started 2023. Working title: AI orchestration looks like household budgeting. The argument: running a household budget for thirty years is the same discipline as running an AI workflow. Neither has been named as a category by the people building either. Thirteen lines. Has been thirteen lines for over a year.
Fragment 2, started 2022. Working title: What my mother taught me about long-term value. The argument: she has invested in family for sixty years. I have invested in real estate for twenty. The vocabulary linking the two has not been written. A paragraph. No opening sentence yet.
Fragment 3, started 2024. Working title: Why most writing about AI does not survive past the news cycle. The argument: writing rooted in the current model release is dead in eighteen months. Writing rooted in the underlying discipline survives. I do not yet know how to write the second without it sounding too general. Two paragraphs. The second is the problem.
These three are typical. They are foundations that have not yet been built on.
Why I start before I know, the practice that built the folder#
I believe in starting before I know what to do. This is the practice that built the working folder. It is the practice that built every system I have built.
Starting before you know is the only way to find out what you think. The fragment forces you to commit a position in the smallest possible unit. You come back to it and see whether the position still holds. If it does, you build on it. If it does not, you delete it and start another.
The fragments accumulate. The accumulation is the system. The fragmentation is not opposed to the system. The fragmentation is what the system is made of.
The one that keeps coming back, all four seats at once#
The fragment I keep coming back to is the one about systems and operations.
It has been in the folder for years. I open it. I write three sentences. I close it. I open it again two months later. The three sentences are still right. The next three are still missing.
The argument: systems and operations are the same thing in two languages. The engineer calls it the system. The investor calls it the operation. The mother calls it the household. The artist calls it the practice. Nobody has written the connection because nobody has been in all four seats at once.
I have been in all four seats. The day I write the fragment to where it leaves the folder, the fragment becomes an essay. Until then, it stays. The fragmentation is the building.
What the folder has taught me, limits and openings#
The working folder has taught me two things.
The first is what my limits are. The fragments that have been in the folder the longest are the arguments I have not yet earned. Each one points at a place where I have more to live before I can write it.
The second is where creativity is still open. The unfinished fragments are the seeds. The argument I cannot yet write is the argument no one has written. The folder is full of those.
The limits are mine. The openings are mine. Both are evidence of the same writer doing the work that is still becoming.
The folder is open on my desk. The next fragment is waiting for the next sentence. The next sentence is the one I have not earned yet.
I am at the desk anyway.
Working.
